Simple Instrumentation Profiling on ColdFire V2 - V4e Targets

The ColdFire V2 - V4 targets collect the profiling information by using the profiling system. These targets do not have the hardware capability to collect trace. The profiling system consists of three main components:

• The statically-linked code library of compiled code containing the profiler. This library is created and distributed within the CodeWarrior product.
• An Application Programming Interface (API) to control the profiler
• The Simple Profiler Viewer to view and analyze the profile results

The profiling system collects information using a profiler, which analyzes the amount of time a program spends performing various tasks and detects bottlenecks between the functions/routines. This type of information-tracking can be useful for determining the cost of calling a routine. The cost of a routine call is not only the time spent in the routine, it is also the time spent in its children, that is the subsidiary routines it calls, the routines they call, and so on.

To use the profiler for profiling an application, perform the following actions:

• Include the profiler library and files in the CodeWarrior project
• Configure your project to turn on profiling
• Modify the application source code to make use of the profiler API
• Debug the application and collect profiling information
• Open the Simple Profiler Viewer to view the results

This process of profiling gets you all the data you need to perform a professional-level analysis of the runtime behavior of your application.

This chapter contains the following topics:

• Include Profiler Library and Files
  
• Configure Project for Profiling
  
• Modify Source Code
  
• Debug Application and Collect Profiling Information
  
• View Profiling Results